TOUCH DETECTIVE 3 TRANSLATION SERIES

For a start, they would probably note that the movement of peoples around the planet since 1980s was significant.

Let’s imagine a class in fifty years’ time, looking at the seeming global rise in interest in translation, both literal and metaphorical, and think about what they might be seeing. Why, then is there such interest in translation today? How can we start to explain it? Translation has been around for millennia moving between languages is by no means a new concept. I well remember one Faculty meeting at the University of Warwick where I attempted to introduce an MA course in translation when I was publicly accused of “trying to destroy genuine comparative literature!” (my italics). It is worth noting at this juncture that there was considerable resistance in the 1970s to all kinds of new fields, especially if they were interdisciplinary: film, media, theatre, women and gender, postcolonial studies were all, like translation studies, regarded by some established disciplines with suspicion. Yet that book sells more copies today than any of us ever imagined, and the 4th expanded edition was published in 2014, along with a new Chinese edition and a Korean edition.

TOUCH DETECTIVE 3 TRANSLATION SERIES

I had to convince Terry Hawkes, editor of the New Accents series in which the book appeared, to take a risk that there might be some interest in studying translation systematically, and he then had to convince the publishers. When I wrote my book Translation Studies in 1980, there was no sense of the field being even in existence. Within academia, interest in translation has been growing apace, with a proliferation of journals, books, conferences, doctoral dissertations and courses, linked of course to the growth of the relatively new subject, Translation Studies. Ted Hughes’ version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses made the British bestseller lists in 1997, as did Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf in 1999, a totally unexpected phenomenon. But I agree with Daniel Hahn-we are seeing more prizes for literary translators, more workshops and book fairs featuring translation, a gradual acknowledgement by reviewers that the name of a translator deserves a mention when a book by a non-English-speaking writer is being discussed, more small publishers venturing boldly to publish translations and, probably most significant of all, a growing body of readers who buy translations.

(Note, of course, English schools: thankfully there is a bilingual policy in Wales and increasing recognition in Scotland also of both Scots and Gaelic). The British government under Tony Blair abolished compulsory foreign language learning in English schools in 2004, with predictably dire consequences, and the present coalition government is belatedly trying to repair the damage. He was, of course, referring to the British context, and things certainly did to need to change in our increasingly monoglot society. In the summer 2013 issue of the Journal for Literary Translators, In Other Words, the editor Daniel Hahn started his editorial with the statement that: “it does feel to me as though things have changed significantly for the literary translation profession in the last few years” (1). Keywords: Translation studies rewriting creativity collaboration

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